Astrid Mager

About

Astrid Mager is a scholar in Science and Technology Studies with a particular interest in Internet technologies and socio-political developments. Her research is concerned with the Internet and society, search engine policies, algorithms and aspects of privacy, critical theory, as well as digital methods against the background of science and technology studies and technology assessment.

Education

Born in 1977 and raised in Linz, she studied sociology and communication sciences at the University of Vienna. She ended her studies in 2002 with a master's thesis dealing with organ transplantation in Austrian media debates (Mag.rer.soc.oec.). From 2002-2003 she studied at the Université Paris Diderot (Erasmus grant). She also attended a number of workshops on Internet research and network analysis by the Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam (Prof. Dr. Richard Rogers). She finished her PhD thesis on the Internet as a a source of health information in 2010 at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna, supervised by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ulrike Felt (Dr. phil.).

Experience

From 2004-2009 Astrid Mager worked as a research collaborator at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, mainly on the project "Virtually Informed. The Internet in the medical field" (FWF). She was also a lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Studies and Nursing Sciences from 2005 to 2010. From 2010 to 2012 she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the HUMlab, Umeå University, in Sweden and investigated search engines and algorithmic ideologies.

Selected Publications

Her list of publications includes a number of articles in international journals – such as Social Studies of Science; New Media & Society; Policy & Internet; Information, Communication & Society – dealing with the Internet and medicine, and, more recently, search engines in contemporary capitalism.

This article conceptualizes “algorithmic ideology” as a valuable tool to understand and critique corporate search engines in the context of wider socio-political developments. Drawing on critical theory it shows how capitalist value-systems manifest in search technology, how they spread through algorithmic logics and how they are stabilized in society. Following philosophers like Althusser, Marx and Gramsci it elaborates how content providers and users contribute to Google’s capital accumulation cycle and exploitation schemes that come along with it. In line with contemporary mass media and neoliberal politics they appear to be fostering capitalism and its “commodity fetishism” (Marx). It further reveals that the capitalist hegemony has to be constantly negotiated and renewed. This dynamic notion of ideology opens up the view for moments of struggle and counter-actions. “Organic intellectuals” (Gramsci) can play a central role in challenging powerful actors like Google and their algorithmic ideology. To pave the way towards more democratic information technology, however, requires more than single organic intellectuals. Additional obstacles need to be conquered, as I finally discuss.

This article investigates how the new spirit of capitalism gets inscribed in the fabric of search algorithms by way of social practices. Drawing on the tradition of the social construction of technology (SCOT) and 17 qualitative expert interviews it discusses how search engines and their revenue models are negotiated and stabilized in a network of actors and interests, website providers and users first and foremost. It further shows how corporate search engines and their capitalist ideology are solidified in a socio-political context characterized by a techno-euphoric climate of innovation and a politics of privatization. This analysis provides a valuable contribution to contemporary search engine critique mainly focusing on search engines’ business models and societal implications. It shows that a shift of perspective is needed from impacts search engines have on society towards social practices and power relations involved in the construction of search engines to renegotiate search engines and their algorithmic ideology in the future.

While the internet is often discussed as empowering or endangering patients due to broadening access to medical and health-related information, little is known about the way patients actually get informed about medical conditions and how the technology shapes their practices. This article draws on 40 user observations and 40 qualitative interviews to explore how users employ the web to obtain knowledge about a chronic disease in the Austrian context. Following concepts from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) it elaborates how users’ individual medical preferences and search engines’ mechanisms of pre-filtering information co-shape online health information practices. This analysis exemplifies that search engines are no passive intermediaries, but rather actively shape how users browse through, select and evaluate health information in the context of their own bodies of knowledge. Accordingly, new skills are required on the part of users, but also on the part of medical professionals and policy makers. Both policy makers and doctors are invited to engage with users’ highly individual search practices and establish more dialogue-oriented and technology-focused health policy measures, rather than trying to educate users with standardized quality criteria for websites not responding to users’ online routines and needs, as will be finally concluded.

Mager, A. (2012). Health information politics: Reconsidering the democratic ideal of the Web as a source of medical knowledge. First Monday, 17. doi:10.5210/fm.v17i10.3895

While most of the existing research about online health information focuses exclusively on either the provider or the user side of communication circuits, this article aims to integrate and discuss both sides and their mediated relation to one another. Drawing on actor-network theory, it conceptualizes the provision and use of online health information as sociotechnical. It questions concretely how website providers position their websites and information, how users browse through the web and assemble information, and interrogates the various concepts of online health information these different practices imply. Further, it asks how search engines, and Google in particular, come to play such a dominant role in the way health-related web information is provided and used. The article concludes by evaluating the implications of the findings in regard to debates about the quality of online health information and the way in which web information is distributed and acquired on a broader scale.

This paper investigates how public discourses, as articulated in EU policy and Austrian media documents, take part in the creation and stabilisation of a new patient figure – the e-patient. The documents we analysed act as one material form for enacting, performing and giving meaning to the changes occurring when a new technology enters established networks in the medical realm. Our analysis will show that the public discourses we studied deploy three rather different forms of discursive registers, each of which address and perform a specific relation between currently new information and communication technologies and citizen-patients. From one place, moment or problem-solution package to the next a slightly different hybrid and ‘multiple citizen-patient’ is being shaped, discussed, observed or concealed. The multiplicity we observed reveals crucial tensions and contradicting expectations expressed towards the future citizen-patient, showing the challenges for e-health in the making.

Felt, U., Fochler, M., Mager, A., & Winkler, P. (2008). Visions and versions of governing biomedicine: narratives on power structures, decision-making, and public participation in the field of biomedical technologies in the Austrian context. Social Studies Of Science, 38, 233-257. Retrieved from http://sss.sagepub.com/content/38/2/233.abstract

In recent years, governance and public participation have developed into key notions within both policy discourse and academic analysis. While there is much discussion on developing new modes of governance and public participation, little empirical attention is paid to the public's perception of models, possibilities and limits of participation and governance. Building on focus group data collected in Austria within the framework of a European project, this paper explores lay people's visions and versions of government, governance and participation for two biomedical technologies: post-natal genetic testing and organ transplantation. Building on this analysis, we show that people situate their assessments of public participation against the background of rather complex lay models of the governance and government of the respective technology. Because these models are very different for the two technologies, participation also had very different connotations, which were deeply intertwined with each socio-technical system. Building on these findings we argue for a more technology-sensitive approach to public participation.

Google has been blamed for its de facto monopolistic position on the search engine market, its exploitation of user data, its privacy violations, and, most recently, for possible collaborations with the US-American National Security Agency (NSA). However, blaming Google is not enough, as I suggest in this article. Rather than being ready-made, Google and its ‘algorithmic ideology’ are constantly negotiated in society. Drawing on my previous work I show how the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ gets inscribed in Google’s technical Gestalt by way of social practices. Furthermore, I look at alternative search engines through the lens of ideology. Focusing on search projects like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, YaCy and Wolfram|Alpha I exemplify that there are multiple ideologies at work. There are search engines that carry democratic values, the green ideology, the belief in the commons, and those that subject themselves to the scientific paradigm. In daily practice, however, the capitalist ideology appears to be hegemonic since 1) most users employ Google rather than alternative search engines, 2) a number of small search projects enter strategic alliances with big, commercial players, and 3) choosing a true alternative would require not only awareness and a certain amount of technical know-how, but also effort and patience on the part of users, as I finally discuss.

-> Mobile devices are increasingly being used to measure and monitor health and body functions. This is fuelled by a trend towards self- optimisation and increased efficiency.-> Such tracking devices can contribute to greater autonomy and allow more independence outside of traditional institutions.-> At the same time, they can also lead to continuous surveillance and heteronomy. Consequently, health apps should be used with caution.-> Government and politicians should ensure appropriate legal frameworks and support fundamental rights-friendly technology.

-> Global IT companies collect data to provide personalised advertising.-> These business practices are contradicting European values and legislations.-> The European data protection reform aims at forcing companies such as Google to respect European fundamental rights.-> The implementation of this vision in form of political practices is characterised by friction and conflict.-> In addition to the regulation of global search engines, Europe should focus on law enforcement and privacy-friendly technologies.Author: Astrid Mager

-> Mobile devices are increasingly being used to measure and monitor health and body functions. This is fuelled by a trend towards self- optimisation and increased efficiency.-> Such tracking devices can contribute to greater autonomy and allow more independence outside of traditional institutions.-> At the same time, they can also lead to continuous surveillance and heteronomy. Consequently, health apps should be used with caution.-> Government and politicians should ensure appropriate legal frameworks and support fundamental rights-friendly technology.

-> Global IT companies collect data to provide personalised advertising.-> These business practices are contradicting European values and legislations.-> The European data protection reform aims at forcing companies such as Google to respect European fundamental rights.-> The implementation of this vision in form of political practices is characterised by friction and conflict.-> In addition to the regulation of global search engines, Europe should focus on law enforcement and privacy-friendly technologies.Author: Astrid Mager